Nevan
I roused slowly.
The first thing I noticed was the stillness.
The deep, satisfied quiet of a body that had been thoroughly spent and had slept without dreams for the first time in longer than I could remember. My muscles were loose. My breathing was easy. The dull, persistent ache that had lived behind my ribs for years, that constant pressure of the corruption grinding against my bones like sand in a wound, was quieter.
It wasn't gone, but it was quieter. As though something had gentled it in the night, smoothed its edges, pushed it back from the surface.
I lay still for a moment, eyes closed, letting the feeling settle over me. My skin felt different. It felt warmer, cleaner, somehow, as though a layer of grime I'd stopped noticing had been washed away. I lifted my hand and pressed my fingers to my chest, to the place where the corruption usually pulsed the hardest, and felt nothing but the steady beat of my own heart.
